How To Teach Adult Swimming Lessons

If you want to attract more students to your swimming lessons, you'll need to learn how to teach adult swimming lessons. Some adults never take swimming lessons because they may have a fear of water or because they never had the opportunity to learn to swim. Teaching adult swimming lessons is a bit different than teaching children or babies to swim. You may have to work through an adult's fears before he gets in the water.

Start each swimming lesson by having the adults stand in the shallow end. Get them comfortable with putting their faces in the water. Have each adult stand with their hands on the side of the pool at the start of each swimming lesson. Tell them to take a deep breath, bend forward and place their face in the water. Tell them to blow bubbles so they can see themselves breathe while under water without swallowing water or choking.

Show them how to float. Tell them to lie on their stomachs in the water. They will float. After they are comfortable just floating, tell them to put their face into the water and practice blowing bubbles without holding on to the side of the pool.

Add kicking as the swimming lessons progress. Adults should learn to kick properly before they learn arm strokes. Tell them to move their legs up and down in the water, bending slightly from the knee. Their feet shouldn't kick out of the water. They can practice kicking by holding the side of the pool or by using the kicking to propel their floating bodies forward.

Show them the arm strokes. Start with the breaststroke, which may be the easiest, then work your way up to crawl. Tell them to think of dividing the water with their hands as they swim the breaststroke or cutting through the water like it is butter as they swim the crawl.

Teach them breathing techniques after they've learned the strokes. Tell them to lift their mouth out of the water whenever they need air. They will probably notice that their mouth comes out of the water automatically as they become better swimmers.